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Category: 4D printing

Definitely many benefits to 4D including manufacturing, tech devices, and energy.

A team of researchers has uncovered the key to what they call 4D printing – and solar energy may be one of the top 2 fields to benefit from the great invention.

Did your eyes widen in disbelief with the invention of 3D printing as plastic, ceramic, glass, living cells, and even chocolate were born out of a printer? Now it may seem like yesterday’s news. In a way, it kind of is. The 2D laser printer in your home office is probably looking more and more archaic to you these days – or if you’re still using one of those prehistoric dot matrix printers from the 1980s, shame on you. It’s time to step into the future with 4D printing.

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Self printed, self healing houses now possible.

Disrupted Commentary.

We’ve been writing about the positive disruption potentially caused by 3D printing since we started this blog in 2014. The key to making it commercial viable has been materials science developments and such is the rate of advance 3D printing is now being used to print car parts. Now we’re moving into materials science that allows self healing buildings – from 3dprint; “Magic is a recurring thing in the 3D printing industry. It’s quite challenging—and exhilarating all at once—the first time you put one of the machines into action for yourself, watching a project go from start to finish. To see that you can decide on something you want, and then have it appear in front of you is startling, euphoria-inducing, and downright addicting. Add to that the sheer simplicity of how it all works, and the brain is further boggled. But none of this compares to the true magic of this technology—all emanating from human minds.

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download (15)Technology can be confusing when it begins moving at such an accelerated rate, perfectly exemplified by the 3D industry, and encompassing all that goes with it, from 3D scanning to 3D printing and then peripheral industries that are often connected too such as augmented and virtual realities. We’ve barely digested all the stunning innovations making impacts in so many different sectors, from 3D printed medical models that allow for more complex surgeries, to 3D printed parts for a suspension system that make racing bikes go faster, all the way to incredible toys for your kids using augmented reality systems.

Yet, while work is definitely just beginning in the 3D realm, scientists have already begun exploring a range of uses for 4D technology that should prove offer impacts in just as many applications, from the medical field to electronics and far beyond. It might seem like a lot all at once, but the two technologies definitely work together, with the 4D emphasis adding a more intuitive, smart angle to fabrication.

As we’ve seen in other studies using the application of heat, it would appear that 3D printed objects can be treated or manipulated to cause shapes to morph according to their environment, as well as remembering their previous state and going back to it in the appropriate conditions. Now, teams from both MIT and the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) are employing light in their endeavors to create smart structures. They’ve had good success too, if the amount of torturing they’ve put these materials through is any indication. According to the engineers, they’ve twisted, bent, and stretched everything from small coils to flowers fabricated out of numerous materials, and even a replica they made of the Eiffel tower. As is the case with structures being pushed into the 4D realm, all of the above materials reverted.

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Smart homes that repairs themselves. Why not since 4D-Printing enables self-assembly.

DARPA has unveiled the Engineered Living Materials program that combines living systems with traditional building materials for on-demand and self-repairing material that cuts cost and energy.

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Future Science Group (FSG) today announced the publication of a new article in Future Science OA looking to identify and define key terms associated with bioinks and bioprinting.

The use of 3D printing technologies for medical applications is a relatively new and rapidly expanding field, and is being approached in a multi-disciplinary manner. This has led to overlapping and ambiguous definitions within the field as a whole, and confusion over some terms, for example the prefix of ‘bio-‘. This new piece from William Whitford (GE Healthcare Life Sciences, USA) and James B. Hoying (Advanced Solutions Life Sciences, USA) introduces common definitions for 3D bioprinting-related terms, putting them into context. Terms defined within the article include 3D and 4D printing, bioadditive manufacturing, biofabrication, biomanufacturing, bioprinting, biomimetic printing and bioinks, among others.

“Additive manufacturing has transformed our approach to production in many ways,” notes Whitford. “There is now rapid development in the bioresearch, diagnostic and therapeutic applications for 3D printing. It’s difficult to even keep abreast of the number and types of relevant printing technologies, applications and vocabulary. We here identify some of the terms recently coined in this arena.”

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I told folks just the other day; US Manufacturing in the next 3 to 5 years will primarily be robots, 3-/4-D printers, other AI systems, and a couple of line managers to spot check quality of the operation. Just surprised Amazon wasn’t already fully robotic.

Amazon’s progress toward an army of helpful robots is one step closer: a prize for the best warehouse-working “picker” machine has gone to a robot designed by a team from TU Delft Robotics Institute and Delft Robotics, both based in the Netherlands.

The competition was held in conjunction with Germany’s Robocup in Leipzig. Announced on Monday, the winners took home $25,000, while the university of Bonn’s NimbRo won $10,000 for second place and Japanese firm PFN was awarded $5,000 for third.

The contest, in Amazon’s words, “aimed to strengthen the ties between the industrial and academic robotic communities,” and ended with slightly fewer than half of the entrants scoring more than 20 out of 40 possible points, according to a report in TechRepublic. The technology is advancing quickly: all of those contestants would have surpassed the highest scorer in the previous Picking Challenge, held just three years ago.

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This article is a bit odd to me. Why? Because the way 5D printing is describe is not that much more advance than 3D printing. In fact, 4D printing (as shown by Mitsubishi Lads) prints an object that self evolves/ assembles itself into the object specification submitted to the printer. In another article, it was highlighted that 5D printing would take the 4D printing formation and apply technology that enables the object/s to have intelligence to repair/ evolve over time. So, at this point 5D is still being defined.

3D-printed parts made with five-axis technology are stronger and use less material.

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Amazing; imagine when 4D printing produces building materials that self assemble themselves and with 5D printing the building can monitor the building and repairs itself someday in the future.

Hushang Tengda has 3D printed a 400 square meter luxury villa, on site, in just 45 days.

Construction is a huge deal in the 3D printing world right now and the likes of WinSun have made an impact with the first 3D printed office in Dubai. It also printed a five-storey apartment building and 10 3D printed houses in just 24 hours back in China. This villa is a still a breakthrough though, because it was built on site.

We’re making flat pack houses now

Most 3D printed houses are made in parts at a nearby facility and then transported to the final construction site for assembly, almost like flat pack furniture. It is a massive step forward, but the elephant in the room is still the transport costs. So this new construction is a landmark venture in its own right.

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Agree. So as a tech engineer, futurist, innovator, leader you have 3 key tracks to remain relevant in the future: bio/ living technology, quantum, and a hybrid of living/ bio meets quantum computing.

Editor €™s Note: Richard van Hooijdonk is a futurist and international keynote speaker on future technologies and disruption and how these technologies change our everyday lives. Van Hooijdonk and his international team research €˜mega trends €™ on digital health, robotic surgery, drones, the internet-of-things, 3D/4D printing, Big Data and other how new technologies affects many industries.

With people living increasingly longer lives, medical care from surgeons, physicians, pharmacists and dentists will increase as well. And since the future of healthcare will look very different from what it is today, the medical field may just be the right industry for you, even if being a doctor or nurse is not your calling. Many new technologies will be incorporated into the healthcare industry and we will see things like robotic surgeries and 3D-printed organ implants, to name a few. This means we will be seeing a whole new host of career opportunities, even for jobs that don €™t actually exist yet.

1. Healthcare Navigator €“ Guides patients through the complex medical system of the future

Being sick can be extremely stressful €“ to yourself, the doctors and nursing staff. But your family and loved ones also have a lot to deal with when you are ill. Technology will make healthcare more and more complex to navigate in the future. We €™ll be introduced to bio-printers, electronic pills, 3D-printed medication, surgical robots and DNA manipulation. To make sense of all these new technologies and treatments, and guide the patient as well as family members, healthcare navigators will become indispensible.

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The author sounds skeptical about Fujifilm’s 5D printer.

Granted this is suppose to operate itself, etc. However, one of the requirements for 5D printing means that once an object assembles itself (like we see with 4D) that the same object learns, matures, and evolves itself. I too wonder like the author if this does this; we will find out at some point.

Sayonara humans as end-to-end automation set to take people out of print production process.

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